


Blood on the floor

by imsfire



Series: Esper 'verse [10]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian is a wonderful dad, Fluff and Feels, Gen, Injured children, Jyn is a wonderful mother, Mention of blood, Motherhood, Parenthood, former child soldiers making sure their own children have happy lives, past angst, present fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-19 02:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22836997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Jyn is in bed with the flu, and her two small boys try to make supper.  It all goes slightly wrong...
Relationships: Cassian & Jyn & OCs, Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Series: Esper 'verse [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1327331
Comments: 21
Kudos: 49





	Blood on the floor

She’d been pretty sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, already, even before the first yelp of pain floated up from downstairs, and the crying child invaded her room and her bed and she had to drag herself up and focus on him. Esperanz, choking back sobs, and bleeding. Bleeding **_hard_** ; _Force alive, what the fuck_ – “Galen, sweetie,” Jyn said hoarsely “bring me the medical box and a clean shirt for your brother, will you? Thank you, my darling.”

Her younger son had hovered in the doorway at first, uncertainty written all over his heart-shaped face at the sight of his big brother crying, and her hauling herself to sit up in her flu-y sick bed. He trundled out of the room again, in search of the family med-pack. 

Both the boys knew where the med-pack was, it lived in the storage slot all the family called “the front-room flap”, and they both knew what was in it and how to use it. It was a matter of some importance to Cassian and to Jyn that their children should see first-aid as a simple and normal thing; that they shouldn’t have any hang-ups about medics or resources or taking bacta that should go to a more needy case.

Esper’s hand was bleeding and he should have all the bacta he needed.

“What happened? Let me see… Ow, sweetest, that must hurt!” It was a clean cut, but deep, a slice like a knife-stroke right through the pad of his thumb. “You’re being so brave. That’s right, put pressure on it again and hold your hand up, well done, that’s the way. Tell me what happened?”

“We wanted to make you a sandwich.” Esper’s voice wavered. “’Cos you’re sick and in bed and it’s suppertime and Galen said for sure you’d be hungry. We got the bread and buttered it and chopped up the little onions and then the can-opener didn’t want to work and I – I dropped it and it cut me.”

“The can-opener?” Jyn said, her germ-filled brain unhelpful in the face of this disjointed storytelling.

“The edge of the can Bazed bincurd is in a can. For the filling.”

Braised bean curd; real old-school mess rations, but mashed with minced baby onions it was one of his favourites. They’d tried to make her Esper’s favourite sandwich and it had all gone wrong.

“I’m sorry, mama,” he added with a long sniff.

“Sorry? Pickle-pie, stardust, mijo, it’s alright! Oh, my sweetest pickle!” Germs be damned; her precious boy. She wrapped her arms round him in a warm hug. “It was a lovely idea. It was a really kind thing to do. You don’t have to say sorry for anything.”

“But I bled all over the kitchen.”

“And then you were very sensible and brave and came upstairs for me to fix it. And here’s your brother with the medical box now. Thank you, Galen.” She smiled as hard as she could to reassure them both, flicking the clasps on the med-pack and quickly pulling open a bottle of sanitiser to rub over her hands because _Stars dammit, I am not going to give you the bloody flu as well when you’re already bleeding_ \- “Let me see now, a dab of bacta and a bandage and you’ll be good as new.”

She still felt like shit but at least having to help her boys was giving her something to think about. 

Or at least, one of her boys; Galen had slipped away. Then just as Jyn was patting down the bacta patch on Esper’s thumb, there came another tragic wail of pain from below, and the clumsy thumping of short legs trying to come upstairs very fast. “Oh Force, what happened, honeybundle?”

Galen, whimpering. More blood; not quite as much, but still far more than she ever, ever wanted to see coming from either of her children. “Oh, my little bull-calf, come here, come to Mama! Show me?” He held up his left hand, with one fingertip sliced clean across. “Oh honey-bird, ouch, sweetie! My poor brave baby!”

Another cleaning wipe, and more bacta, and another bandage, while Galen sobbed out that he’d tried to finish opening the can “because I’m hungry and I know you are too and so is Esper and I thought I could help…”. 

Her head was ringing like a bell, what with the crying of her children and the clogging of her sinuses, and her throat was dry as the sands of Jakku. She tried not to cough on her sons as she hugged them both close. One under each arm, like baby birds. “I’m so proud of you both for trying to help. My brave boys. When Papa gets home we’ll send him out for fish and fries for your tea, what about that then?”

Right on cue, there was the sound of the back door opening. Jyn swallowed, trying to moisten her throat enough to call out to Cassian. Maybe he’d come upstairs straight away and she wouldn’t need to raise her voice, because stars, her throat still hurt like nine hells…

He called warmly “Jyn?” Then silence; and sudden muffled sounds from downstairs, doors opening and shutting quickly, footsteps quartering the open rooms, running to the stairs, coming up, light and fast, and Cassian’s voice was urgent and panicked as he shouted her name “Jyn! **Jyn!** ”

“In here,” Jyn croaked. “With the boys.”

He stopped on the landing, hesitating outside the door for a moment; she could see his shape against the gap round the frame, holding very still; then he pushed the door wide open with a rapid swing of his arm and stepped through with his blaster in front, braced in both hands. Eyes searching the room. Tense and terrified, poised to strike whatever had invaded his home and left blood stains in his kitchen.

Shit.

“Cassian, it’s alright, it’s okay –“ and shit and double shit, she’d started to cough, trying to speak fast. The boys hugged close against her, them trying to comfort her now while she tried to comfort both him and them and still not choke from coughing. Cassian’s look of grim fear metamorphosed into bewilderment and gradually relief.

He stepped back into the doorway and bent down, lowering his weapon. There was a thump as he laid it on the floor outside the bedroom before he came back in.

His voice only shook a very, very little as he said “What happened?” She was pretty sure no-one but her would have noticed.

“Papa, Papa, I’m sorry, we’re sorry!” bawled Galen, and began to cry even harder than ever, hugging his bandaged hand to his chest. He father sat down on the bed and swept him quickly into his arms.

“Precious boy, shh, it’s okay. Did you have an accident? My brave one!” Over the child’s curly head he murmured to Jyn “I saw the blood and I thought something had – you know –“

Yes, she knew. However many years the peace lasted, and it was almost ten now, they were both still soldiers of long standing, and letting that go completely was hard. She could only imagine the surge of terror it would have roused in her if their places were reversed, coming home to blood on the floor and no sign of her family.

“Is there really a lot of blood?” she asked, and hugged the boys again. “My poor pickle-pies, what a shame! When you were just trying to help Mama, too. And now we’ve all worried Papa.”

Slowly, in between the hiccoughing end of their tears, she coaxed the boys into repeating the sorry little saga of the braised-bean-curd-and-onions sandwich and the recalcitrant can opener. They were almost cheerful again by the end, buoyed by the reminder that fish and fries were a possibility for dinner now. Galen had finally stopped snuffling and Esperanz had sat up, out of her embrace, the better to illustrate his story with expressive gestures.

She’d managed to cough only once more, all the way through his narration. It was an odd thing to be proud of. But listening to her sons chatter, watching their father smile and cuddle them and hide away entirely the fact that for a single terrible moment he’d thought them all dead; controlling her coughing to make sure none of them worried about her just for now, Jyn was proud. 

She and Cassian had learned early and hard that anything could be taken from them; everyone could die, every home be destroyed. That blood on the floor meant death, in this room or another, and the noise a crying child made could bring that death down on them, or you, next. They were the people they were, because of that blood and those lessons, because of those stories in their own past.

And they would make sure, between them, that there was never anything worse in their sons’ young lives than a cut hand or a failed attempt to make sandwiches. 

Esper and Galen were growing up so fast. All too soon they’d be young men sorting out their lives, studying their hopes, following their loyalties. The galaxy was still an imperfect place, the Imperial remnant still sneaking around the backwoods of the Outer Rim. The Dark Side was still out there. One day it would try again. It always did. 

But until then, she’d keep her family safe as long as she could. Bandage their hurts, reassure their sadnesses. Keep from coughing her flu germs onto them. She and Cassian, every day. Because peace wasn’t just a grand theory, or an anniversary celebration once a year. It was an everyday life; prose-bound, routine; it was something unremarkable in every way. Rebuilding all the worlds, and all the lives, and letting them grow.

Her boys would grow healthy and happy and unafraid; and she and Cassian had grown, and would continue to grow, beside them. Maybe one day they’d even be civilians first and old soldiers second, and all those long-ago hard lessons would fade into insignificance.

Cassian kissed the boys on their curly heads and stood up; bent to kiss her forehead too, though she tried to wave him off. The kiss was firm, a little more lingering than was necessary, and his lips trembled for a second against her skin. She would never have known he was still shaking, but for that. He hadn’t looked back once to check on his blaster outside. His old self-discipline came in handy in all these odd ways. To comfort his children when he was himself shaken up; to set down his weapon out of sight, when every scrap of training told him never ever to do that, so as not to upset them further. She wondered if she could ever appreciate him enough.

“I’ll go and get us that fish supper,” he said.


End file.
